


Familiar

by concretewasps (defenestratedplane)



Series: Everything Is Fine [2]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angst, Aquaphobia, Blood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4071943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defenestratedplane/pseuds/concretewasps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim is in a familiar place, and hears a familiar voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiar

He’s running through the forest, desperately trying to find the way out. He trips over something—a root, a body, he doesn’t care enough to look and find out.

But this is familiar. He’s been here so many times, been running for so long, that he thinks maybe he’s never stopped running, maybe he’s never really left.

He steadies himself and keeps on running.

He can escape. He  _can_. He remembers a time when he did, but maybe that was just a dream, the wishful thinking of a drowning man.

And he  _is_  drowning, he realizes, has fallen into a dark pit of water that he can barely see the surface of. If he can claw his way to the top, he can keep running. He knows; he’s done this so many times.

There, solid ground, and he pulls himself up, coughs the water out of his lungs and crawls over something he can tell for certain is a body this time. It’s nobody he knows, and though he hates himself for it, he can’t bring himself to care. He has to escape. This may be familiar, but he is no less desperate for it.

He pulls himself up to lean against a tree.. Lets himself rest for just a moment. Think. He should know where the exit is, after so long. He can almost picture it.

Before he moves again, he listens carefully to his surroundings, makes sure nothing is around. And then—

“Tim…”

No.

No, he can’t be hearing that voice.

“Tim…”

But he is.

Maybe he’s hallucinating. Maybe the forest is lying to him. It no longer matters; he has to find the source of that voice. He  _has_  to.

He strains himself to listen more closely before he hears it again.

“Please…”

He takes off running with a new purpose. With every stride, the voice, that voice which should not be, gets louder, closer.

“Please, Tim…”

“I’m sorry…”

“Tim…”

“ _Tim…_ ”

After an eternity, he stops, and sees the source of the voice.

“Jay.”

Jay is slumped on the ground, back against a tree, hands clutching the wound in his side.

His eyes are closed and he is no longer speaking.

Tim runs to him.

“Jay!”

Jay’s eyes snap open just as Tim kneels on the ground next to him.

“Tim…? Are you…?”

“Yeah, I’m really here.”

And so is Jay. Against all logic, so is Jay, and for the first time in as long as Tim can remember, he feels happiness surge through him. Jay is here, he is  _alive_ , he is—

Very pale. Still bleeding from his side. Looking as though he can barely keep his eyes open.

“I should have listened to you, Tim. I’m sorry.”

“It’s- fine. It’s okay, Jay. We just need to get you out of here.”

“I don’t—” he coughs for a moment. “I don’t think I can stand.”

“I’ll help you, here—”

As Jay holds out one of his hands to Tim, the bleeding he was trying to staunch seems to increase. Tim grabs his hand, but he starts coughing again. His coughing gets worse as he tries to stand, until he wrenches his hand away to cover his mouth. He falls to the ground and is doubled over with his coughs.

“Jay!”

Tim helps him to sit up. The hand at his side joins the other at his mouth as he begins to cough up blood. Tim presses his hands against Jay’s wound before it can seep out any worse.

But there is so much blood.

“Tim, you—” another cough. “You need to go.”

“No—”

“But- if- that thing—”

“I’m not leaving you behind again!”

Jay’s coughs become so bad that he can no longer respond. There is blood streaming down his chin, blood pooling around Tim’s fingers at his side, and there is so much, so much that Tim could drown, but Tim can’t stop it, can’t stop Jay from dying, can’t do anything but feel worthless as he fails his friend yet again—

Jay goes still beneath him.

Tim surges awake in his motel bed.

He sits up and tries to control his breathing, fumbles at the nightstand for his pills. The nightmares are familiar. This one in particular, of running through the forest, was also nothing new. But Jay…

Jay was a new addition.

As if he needed more reminders of how much he had failed Jay. But, he supposes, he deserves it anyway.

Putting his head in his hands, he sits in the dark of his motel room, and tries to work up the courage to go back to sleep; he fails.

“I’m sorry…”

Everything is not fine.


End file.
